


Dies Irae

by yuletide_archivist



Category: Amadeus (1984)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-12-19
Updated: 2006-12-19
Packaged: 2018-01-25 01:56:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,309
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1625456
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yuletide_archivist/pseuds/yuletide_archivist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You are his, as they all are, but you do not wish to be sympathetic. You have no semblance of tolerance. You loathe me for what I have done, and you offer no remorse.<br/>That is why I will tell you the real story.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dies Irae

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much to Seph for all the encouragement, to the mods for running the fest again, and to Claudia for the open-endedness of the request! I had a lot of fun writing this. Apologies for the sacrilegious content. 
> 
> Written for Claudia

 

 

He is just the same as all the rest.

He smiles at me as I go, that tight, uncertain smile that says he loves me as he loves all of God's children, or at least he's supposed to. But I see the truth in his eyes. The eyes are the windows to the soul, they say, and his soul, like everyone else's, belongs entirely to _him_. It is always the same. They start out with sympathy, with understanding, _let me absolve you of your sins, my son_ , but by the end, anything they might say to me is only empty words. They cannot save me. No one can save me.

Not even myself.

All those who claim to be sympathetic to me...they wish for a simple, clean explanation, an understanding of why I did it. Is he deranged? they ask. Was he driven to madness by some external force? Was he provoked? Are his claims all in his head? Truly no man can possibly be so wicked as to destroy something so beautiful. They wish to find a way to discount my actions so they might reinstate my virtue, find some loophole to pull me back from the edge of damnation. They need it to feel as though they have done their duty, so they might congratulate themselves on having risen above and beyond by absolving a man who by all rights they should hate. They lie to themselves as they lie to me, offering forgiveness they do not feel and blessing me when they would damn me themselves for what I have done. And in return, I lie to them. For their sakes. They want to believe they have accomplished what they set out to do, that I have seen the error of my ways, and I let them. What difference does it make? I already know He has forsaken me, and no priest will ever convince me otherwise.

In order to be forgiven, you must forgive yourself, and that is something I will never do.

 _Confess your sins, my son,_ they tell me. All fresh-faced youths, perfectly pressed, looking around this place in horror and disbelief, clutching their Bibles closer to their chests as if it is a talisman that will shield them from the stench of madness. It is a book though, just a book. What good do books do?

Then again...

But I digress. The point is that they come to me, sit there, in that chair, right where you are sitting, and ask me to tell them my story. So I do. They wish something dramatic, something rife with anguish and suffering and regret, my sins forced upon me by extenuating circumstances. And I give them a show. I tell them of my abusively austere childhood, my father's cruelty, my virtuous promises to God should He choose to smile down upon me, and their eyes light up. _He is good,_ they say to themselves. _He may have turned down the path of evil, but he is truly good, beneath it all._ And then I tell them of my father's death with no small amount of glee, and I see the shock written across their faces. I confess I revel in it. I build up their hopes only to cast them down, again and again, always redeeming myself with some tale of virtuous thought or good action, but shattering their hope before it can become solid again.

I confess my worship turned to pious disgust at the lewd uncouthness of the boy, my hurt that God would have bestowed His gifts upon someone so unworthy, my martyric attempts to think the best of him even when he was rude and infuriating, and I see them struggle with it, see them try to reconcile the man whose music they loved so dearly with the tale I spin for them. They want me to be good, to be simply a lost child searching for His way again, and I give them just enough so they do not find me truly evil. But by the end, I know it is a stretch for them to see me as anything but a monster. A murderer. A traitor to His name.

If only they knew.

Oh, I impart my sins to them, _chiaroscuro_ against the picture I paint of a Godfearing man up against extreme odds. I show them _gula_ , my preoccupation with sweets to the point of subterfuge. _Luxuria_ , the temptation to deviate from my vow of chastity, my glorious Katherina whom I coveted but who should never be mine. _Superbia_ , my high opinion of myself and my compositions, my delight at being so well respected and held in such high esteem by the Emperor himself. _Avarita_ , in the desire to keep that place only for myself and not to share it, my unwillingness to let anyone, especially that irksome boy, succeed where I could not. _Acedia_ , as my trust in God is shaken and an apathy overwhelms me, deterring me from my holy vows. _Invidia_ , my green-eyed loathing of the man, of his talent, of his success, of his ability to compose things that I could not even fathom in my wildest dreams. And of course... _ira_ , my fury with God and the world and that hateful laugh that drove me to vengeance and eventually murder.

And in doing so, I compare them to his, and design myself a saint in comparison to his behaviour. For every sin I claim, I tell of how he lived it five times over - the way he gorged on wine and women, his hubris regarding his work, his hoarding of fine possessions and fine lifestyle, his lackadaisical, sybaritic behaviour, his arrogant dismissal of any other who achieves any success in an attempt to conceal his jealousy. His abusive and destructive fury. Indeed, I seem the martyr next to his irreverent behaviour, for at least I also possess the seven virtues to counteract my sins. Or at least the semblance of said virtues. And yet, I am the villain, the sinner, the man whose soul they have come to save, because he was God's beloved, and I have killed him. By the end of my story, there is no question that my sins were far greater than his, even though their catalogue would suggest otherwise.

What can they do? They bless me, tell me that if I truly regret and atone for my sins, then God shall be merciful. They do not believe it, but it is their job to say so. They will sleep easier that night knowing they have helped to redeem the monster Salieri, and soon I will be forgotten, just another shrouded figure cast down among the others: unrecognisable, unspectacular, unknown. Just another of God's children, for that is all I am, all I can hope to be. Not like him.

But this is not why you're here, is it? Oh, no, I see the truth in your eyes. You are his, as they all are, but you do not wish to be sympathetic. You have no semblance of tolerance. You loathe me for what I have done, and you offer no remorse.

That is why I will tell you the _real_ story.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Mozart came to Vienna in 1782. He was twenty-six, brash, boastful, crude...still a boy, on all counts. Except that of his music. Oh, I admired him, had always admired him, and perhaps that was the most infuriating thing of all. Despite the despicable nature of his character and the fact that he was intolerable, I could not think less of him once I heard his music. To hold his score in my hands was like feeling dogmatic decree beneath my fingertips, and to have it snatched from me was physical agony.

I tried to be...magnanimous, the bigger person, for I was older and better placed in court, and it was up to me to set an example for the boy. And I tried, kept trying, even when he humiliated me in front of Emperor and court, even when he ousted me from the coveted position of regard in the Emperor's eyes. The truth was, I welcomed it. On some deeply buried level, beneath the pride, beneath the envy, I coveted this. Here was a boy who had had success from such a young age, and whose music was so masterfully written that any attempts to mimic it would be laughable. I had hoped to commiserate with a colleague; instead I found a boy in sore need of a babysitter. But still I wanted his instruction, his expertise, so that I too might learn how to transcribe the voice of God.

It was not until his stunt with Katherina that I truly found myself loathing him. I was angry, and jealous, and disgusted; I could not understand how God could have preferred him to me. What did that say about _my_ character? And yet...even then, I continued to worship him in secret, sometimes even secreted from myself. And that was perhaps the cruellest punishment of all. Why would He not even allow me true hatred? These odds at which I found myself, trapped between hatred of everything this boy represented and love of everything he could do, were perhaps the most painful thing I have ever had to endure.

I perhaps could have slipped fully into hatred, convinced myself of his loathsome nature, stopped my ears to the beauty of his music with the knowledge I now possessed of his character. But when I saw him conduct...well, then it was all over. For everything distasteful and ragged around the edges slipped from his shoulders as he stood there, arms raised, hands moving gracefully through the air, face possessed of such raw emotion that it was easy to believe he was naught but an avatar, a man possessed, the mask of his persona stripped free, leaving him utterly denuded and beautiful for it.

This was the Mozart nobody could see, only hear. The Mozart that truly was, that bled through the cracks in his grotesque mask and flowed out through wine-stained fingertips onto the page. That was where he lay, entwined in his music, and I wondered if he gave a little more of his soul with every note he wrote until there would be nothing left of him but the hideous shell. And it was here that my true sin made itself known.

Jealousy, anger, a drive for vengeance...these are the stories I tell the priests, for they are sins that may be forgiven, perhaps. I've admitted them. I've owned them. They do not own me. The sin I keep from them is that even as I hated him, I wanted him. I wanted the person whose words infuriated and whose laugh rankled, but whose voice made my soul sing. I own my other sins, but this...I loathed it. I was disgusted by it. I wanted it to be gone from me. And perhaps I was all the crueller to him because of it, because I felt God was playing an even ruder trick. First, He gives His gift to a heathen boy. Then he makes me, His servant, His puppet, worship him in ways that even He could not sanction.

Even as I tried to thwart his every move, to destroy his career and his life, to take the things from him that I coveted so dearly but was never permitted, I wanted to replace them all with me. He had everything I had ever desired, but beneath my superficial desire to take his place so they might all be mine, I longed to take _their_ place so I might be his. I wanted to dissolve his friendships, his marriage, so I might take their place as his sole confidant. I wanted to be his patron, his colleague, his admirer, all at once. I wanted him to have nothing left but me so that he would worship me as I did him. And even as I plotted to crush him, to wait until he was in the palm of my hand and then close my fingers and leave him broken, I knew I would not. Could not.

He was everything I was not. And I wanted him for it.

In the months after the success of _Axur_ , at a time when I should have been truly altruistic, I instead became even more determined to see him fall. Was it because I loathed him, or because I loathed myself? Loathed the fact that I could not even be happy in my position of success? Why? I tell the others it is because I knew that even though my music had received great acclaim all around, it was not and would not ever hold a candle to even Mozart's offhanded scribbles. And such is true. But the real reason is that I could see in his eyes that he thought me an idiot, a buffoon, a ham-handed composer with no more talent than a common oaf. My success meant nothing to him, and consequently, it meant nothing to me. And I hated him even more for it, hated that he would not let me enjoy my glory, that I _could not_ enjoy my glory because I gauged the measure of my worth by the opinion of an arrogant boy.

I became...obsessive. I sat in secret at every performance of _Don Giovanni_ , and, every evening, I returned home in tears, my heart heavy, my face flushed, and stared at the piano in frustration and anger. I wanted...I wanted to play, but music would be no comfort anymore. I wanted to pray, but God was no comfort either. There was but one thing that could raise my blackened spirits, and he sat at home, surrounded by piles and piles of perfectly marked parchment, on that plane between God and mortal, where I could not touch him.

But there was one person who could. And there began my darkest scheme of all. Even now, I do not know if my intent was to kill him or simply to pull him down to the plane of mortals so I might touch him. I did not know how to kill a man, after all. All I knew was that I would go mad with reaching for an angel while the devils dragged me down into the pits of hell and despair. Sweets had no flavour anymore, gold no lustre, and the only music that comforted me drove me to distraction. The music inside me was dead, God's voice lost to me forever, and the peace I craved I could only find through the lips of the man I loathed most.

Why did I push him so? I cannot say. Part of me longed to see him fall, to drive him to the same despair to which he had driven me, to make him suffer as I had suffered, continued to suffer. And yet part of me...I needed his music. I felt my soul dying, and the Requiem was the only thing that could save it, the only thing that could descend into the darkness where I dwelled and lift me up into the light. Ironic, is it not, that death should bring life? I needed it, craved it, the seriousness of his voice that inspired passion in me that nothing else could. In the end, it was the serious Mozart concealed beneath the ridiculous laughter and the childish behaviour who touched the depths of my soul. I knew he was there, and I wanted more. That was the man I wanted for myself. I wanted to strip away the lewd, uncouth child and leave nothing but the pure, denuded man beneath the shell. I wanted to feel his skin pressed against mine, unhampered by the trappings of arrogance and irreverence.

God imbued me with the need to sing to Him, and made me mute. But here was a man whose voice outstripped a choir of seraphim, and to touch him would be to touch God, to see the angels. And on that night, when I held that quill in my hand and felt music flow from him through me onto the page, I knew what it was to feel truly alive. I was mad with it, feverish, as he was, as if we were all three connected, he and He and I. I wondered what He thought of me, what it felt to him to finally have my soul elevated to His fingertips, to know that I had bested His plans and found my voice against all odds, even His. I wrote faster, music like fire pouring out through my fingers, as if I were possessed, my body fraught with tension and my soul alight, and when Mozart stopped, severing the connection, I was full of such...need that I shook with it. I was glowing, burning, filled with a power I had not been meant to contain, as if I had drunk God's blessing by sapping it from him. He looked weak, exhausted, pallid, like a ghost instead of an angel, but even as he lay there in death-like sleep, I could see life that I had not yet touched.

And here is my sin. I needed to touch it, to touch him - had always needed it, from the beginning, even before I could recognise it. So as I shifted his frail body down the bed, smoothed his wild hair back from his clammy face, gave him the care and attention He had never given me, I did. He was so thin, as if he were disappearing into nothingness beneath my fingertips, and as I swept my hands down his body, feeling his pulse against his throat, his wrists, I felt my heart beat faster, stronger, more alive. I stretched out beside him, feeling myself warm beside his coldness, my face suffusing with colour against his white, white skin, and as I rolled atop him, I felt myself swell against the concavity of his belly. His lips were parted, his breaths shallow and laboured, and I swallowed them too, opened my mouth over his and drank them in like the finest wine, felt myself quicken as life overwhelmed me and my body shuddered and twisted with the unfamiliarity of it. I felt real at last, a man instead of a shadow, a puppet, blood pounding through my ears and muscles coiling with strength and power, music in my veins driving me onward in staccato rhythm, _accelerando, crescendo_ , until His voice merged with mine on a single, reverent sigh and I found the overwhelming achievement of a perfect, authentic cadence.

 _Grazie, signori_ , I murmured, my body thrumming with life, as I slipped away and left him sleeping. They were the last words I would speak to him, and to Him; I knew I had turned away from His light forever, but for a moment, I had known what it felt like to touch God, and that is the moment I choose to live for all eternity.

And now you know my story. My real story. I make no apologies, no excuses. I accept responsibility for what I have done. I care not what you think of me, what they think of me, what He thinks of me. There is only one who matters, whose forgiveness I must seek. It is to him alone that I must answer. And when my day of reckoning comes, before I am cast into the pit of despair, I will be able to look Him in the face and say, when I, the damned, am cast away and consigned to the searing flames, remember that I have been with the blessed, and I am not afraid, for blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.

 


End file.
